Last season’s Boston Celtics championship should have been a coronation for Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. And in many ways, it was.

They’ll go down as franchise legends for leading Boston to its first NBA title in 16 years and doing it in dominant, unforgiving fashion. And the years of calls to break up their pairing – that Celtics were incapable of winning with both of them together, people said – were proven categorically incorrect.

Yet it quickly became clear that, even after their title run, neither Brown nor Tatum is universally viewed as a truly elite player.

The shot-callers at USA Basketball made sure of that.

Brown, the MVP of the Eastern Conference finals and NBA Finals, was left off Team USA’s roster for the 2024 Paris Olympics, then passed over again when the team needed an injury replacement for Kawhi Leonard.

USA Basketball Managing Director Grant Hill said he chose Celtics teammate Derrick White over Brown for basketball reasons (and valid ones, as White proved to be a valuable role player on a team stocked with superstars). Brown disagreed, blaming his prior conflicts with Nike – a major Team USA sponsor – for his snub. He later doubled down on those claims in a rap song he recorded, not-at-all-subtly titled “Just Do It.”

Tatum was part of the national team for the second straight Olympiad, but his surprisingly inconsequential role in Paris would up being one of the top storylines of the tournament.

The three-time first-team All-NBAer and new “NBA 2K25” cover athlete played the second-fewest minutes of any Team USA member and didn’t leave the bench in two of the six games, including the Americans’ come-from-behind win over Serbia in the semifinals. He scored just 21 points across his four Olympic games.

Tatum never publicly griped about his lack of playing time, but plenty of others did so on his behalf, lambasting head coach Steve Kerr for his decision to turn the centerpiece of the best team in the NBA into a supporting character.

Both Tatum and Brown – owners of the two richest contracts in NBA history – undoubtedly would have preferred to be the ones leading the U.S. to its fifth consecutive gold medal. But their Olympic slights should only help the Celtics as Boston looks to avoid a championship hangover and become the first NBA team since 2018 to win back-to-back titles.

How often can the two headliners on a defending champion play the “nobody respects us” card without having to invent criticism that doesn’t exist, or cherry-pick the words of a few pot-stirring talking heads? That fuel should help ward off the feelings of complacency that sometimes follow a title run and ensuing summer of celebration.

“I’m super fired up,” Brown told reporters in July. “I’ve got all the motivation in the world to just come out and improve, so I love it, honestly.”

Those close to Tatum have encouraged him to take a similar approach.

“A lot of people text me and reached out and said, ‘Make sure this fuels you,’ which I appreciate,” Tatum told reporters after the gold medal game, calling his Olympic experience challenging and humbling. “There’s a lot of people that care about me.”

The duo will get an early-season chance for revenge when the Celtics host Kerr’s Golden State Warriors at TD Garden on Nov. 6. They’ll then need to make sure their motivation doesn’t wane.

“I expect JT to come in with the utmost motivation regardless of what happened to him in the summer,” Celtics Coach Joe Mazzulla recently told NBA.com. “Everything nowadays is so short-sighted. But he’s been in the league for seven years. He’s accomplished a lot. He’s got a long time to go. With that are going to come ebbs and flows. He understands that. The one thing about him, regardless of the circumstances, his work ethic, his habits and his mindset don’t change.”

Mazzulla, who’s known for his intense and unorthodox motivational tactics, surely spent the offseason concocting new ways of keeping Tatum, Brown and the rest of Boston’s roster locked in.

Boston won’t have its full preferred starting five for at least the first month of the season – potentially longer if it opts to take things slow with Kristaps Porzingis’ recovery from offseason leg surgery – which will put more pressure on Tatum and Brown to deliver on a nightly basis.

For Tatum, one priority as the season tips off will be repairing his wayward jump shot, which likely contributed to his Olympic exile.

Tatum’s 47.1% field-goal percentage last season was his best mark since his rookie year, but he struggled to find his jumper throughout the playoffs, making just 31.4% of his shots outside the restricted area (down from 37.8% during the season) and 28.3% of his 3-pointers (down from 37.6%). He attempted 16 jump shots for Team USA and missed all of them.

Celtics training camp opens Sept. 25, followed by a pair of exhibition games in Abu Dhabi (both against Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets) and three more stateside ahead of Banner Night against the New York Knicks on Oct. 22.